Saving Time
by AkitaFallow
Summary: The Sheikah Slate's transportation ability was never designed to be used so often. (But no one knew that.) [[Complete for now, may continue if the muse strikes me]]


Link uses the Sheikah Slate sparingly, at first. He hasn't found many shrines in the beginning, and walking and riding through the kingdom feels like a breath of fresh air he didn't know he needed. (Perhaps his body remembers those hundred years better than his mind does.)

But, as he finds more and more ancient shrines and activates more travel gates, he can't deny the usefulness of being able to zap straight from one side of a mountain range to another. The voice in his head—the one Impa claims is Princess Zelda, the one he can't help but listen to—says time is of the essence, and the best way to make sure he's moving as fast as possible is to cut his travel time down to almost nothing.

So he starts using the Slate every chance he gets, sometimes several times a day, as he moves from Hateno Village to Zora's Domain to Karariko and back again, collecting what he needs and helping the people he can along the way.

It starts just after he leaves Zora's Domain, warping back to the Ta'loh Naeg Shrine in order to let Impa know of his progress after freeing Mipha and Vah Ruta from Ganon's control.

As he materializes on the platform of the shrine, the world spins just a little bit. He shakes his head once, twice, and the feeling subsides. He doesn't think any more of it as he leaps lightly off the edge of the cliff, paragliding gently right to the Sheikah Elder's doorstep.

* * *

He doesn't really notice it happening, at first. He warps down Death Mountain to find more fireproof elixir ingredients, back up the mountain, and then out to the Akkala research lab in need of an Ancient Arrow to deal with a Guardian on the path, and feels the ground shift under his feet as he lands on the travel gate in Goron City. He frowns and pulls a meat skewer from his pack, knowing that he's been going for quite some time without food and he's probably just a bit unsteady because of it. It'll pass.

* * *

It doesn't pass.

The first time he stumbles after a warp, he has to catch himself against the shrine's console and blink away the spots in his eyes. The unsteadiness starts to fade after a few minutes, but the dizziness—the dizziness stays.

One time, after using the Slate four times in a row while running errands to get enough rupees to free the Great Fairy of Akkala (and upgrade his armour enough to actually survive the trip to Vah Rudania), he lands on the travel gate at Shae Mo'sah Shrine and goes straight to his knees, the breath stalling in his throat like there's a vice around his neck, and he has to sit and count himself through it before he panics—and he can't panic, he's the Knight of Hyrule and he can't _afford to_. So he counts through it until the air squeezes into his lungs again, and has to rest his elbows on his knees for a solid minute before he manages to stand.

* * *

"Anything else you need before you go?" Purah asks, her voice sweet and excited like the child her body is, as Link removes the Sheikah Slate from the Guardian Stone after its latest upgrade.

He almost mentions it—gets as far as opening his mouth and drawing a breath and saying that the Slate is taking him apart and putting him back together _wrong_ every time—before he stops. Because… if he says it, tells her his suspicion that's starting to become more than just a suspicion, then she'll want to check it. Want to have him stay while she tries to fix it.

It will be another delay.

There's simply no _time_.

So he closes his mouth, smiles, shakes his head, and ignores the sinking feeling in his gut and the way the world keeps spinning just a half second after his head stops moving.

(Maybe it will just go away on its own.)

* * *

The dizziness is a constant companion now, to the point where he's actually starting to get used to it. He can still hit a Guardian's eye dead center (after some fairly long and intensive practice out behind the Serenne Stable), even though his hands shake and sometimes his target shifts up or to the side without his permission. He can dash through a crowd of bokoblins, shield and sword swinging, and come out the other side with only an extra scratch or two from when his feet fumbled beneath him. Nothing an elixir and a meal won't fix.

(He refuses to think about the kind of warrior he's starting to realize he was, _before_. Because _before_ isn't now, and _before,_ he didn't have the weight of an entire kingdom resting only on his shoulders and limited time.

 _Before_ , he didn't have to rely on technology he's starting to think might not have been designed for what he's using it for.)

But times like these, where he's plummeting through the air only to pull out the paraglider and be jerked right back up again and draw his bow and shoot Vah Medoh's turrets out and plummet _again_ —then no amount of acclimatization will save him, and he almost misses the platform as he comes in to land, instead stumbling just over the lip of it and crashing to his knees. He registers that Teba says something as he wings away, but Link can't really hear it over the pounding in his ears.

When he finally staggers over to the console and presses his Sheikah Slate to it, the little blip of the machine as it says _Travel Gate Activated_ makes his heart give a little lurch.

(He doesn't want to use it.

But there's just… never enough time.)

* * *

Sometimes it gets better. Sometimes, he doesn't use the Slate for several days, like as he treks through the ankle-deep and constantly shifting sand on his way to Gerudo Town, cursing it up and down in his head but for some reason so utterly, inexplicably _relieved_ when the aching deep in his chest loosens ever so slightly and the nausea rolling in his stomach recedes. The dizziness never truly goes away, but he thinks he can attribute most of it to the near-unbearable heat of the desert.

Every time, he thinks it'll be better. It'll work out, he's getting used to it, there's no need to worry.

Then he warps back to Gerudo Town from the Yiga lair, and the sickening blackness covers his vision for a full ten seconds before it clears. He barely makes it into the town through the unstable sand, and has to stop just inside the gate to sit and just breathe. (No one's watching—he can afford the weakness for now.)

And he knows it's not getting better.

* * *

He's already on his knees before he feels the last of the transportation energy fade, the fried wild greens he downed just after the battle with Thunderblight Ganon like acid on his tongue as he vomits onto the ground.

He tries to stand, to stagger off of the platform, and ends up tumbling straight into the water around the Ha Dahamar shrine, the frigid cold freezing his lungs but doing nothing to stop the nausea that's forcing its way up his throat.

"Hey!"

He hears splashing, but can't spare a moment to it as the rushing in his ears increases and water covers his nose and he can't _breathe_ —

There are hands on his arms, rough and hot as a furnace fire against his skin, and he can feel the urge to fight rising in the back of his mind but it's just _too far away_ and he's so tired...

He comes back to himself shivering on a soft bed, several blankets wrapped around him and Tasseren's face (spinning, unsteady) hovering anxiously over him.

"Rensa pulled you outta the pond," the man is saying, as if from far away. "Gave him a bit of a fright, coming out of nowhere like that—"

The world fades out before he can say anything more.

By the time Link wakes, it's dark, and he pads out of the Dueling Peaks Stable on unsteady legs and takes out his horse without a word to the stablemaster, who's looking at him with unabashed concern.

"No charge, kid," Tasseren says as Link mounts the horse, "but I don't think you're well enough to be travelling besides."

Link shakes his head and waves the man off, clicking his tongue to the horse and aiming its head towards Kakariko.

He can't afford to slow down; not now.

* * *

The Lost Woods feel like being stuck inside an ever-shifting dream.

He can hear the giggles of _something_ just over his shoulder, and every time he turns the mist turns with him, spinning in lazy circles that never seem to stop. Every time it curls over him, whiting out his world and fading him back to where he started, he feels the press of the movement deep in his head, the shift from _here_ to _there_ that makes his knees threaten to give out and his head ache. He doesn't think… doesn't think it was this bad. Last time. Was there a last time?

He can't quite remember yet, and he doesn't think he could say even if he did. Everything is just so… confusing and dizzying and he's starting to think maybe it's always been this way—

And suddenly there's light and Koroks all around him and he has a moment (a night, in a strange bed, but what's the difference really?) to just let his aching body rest, to let his spinning head settle as much as it ever does these days. The Master Sword is waiting for him, but he can barely hear what the Deku Tree is saying ( _oh yes, he_ has _done this before, a long time ago_ ) before he's being led off to the Korok Trials.

And then there are more shrines, more zipping from here to there, and by the time he pulls the sword from its resting place he can't feel his hands and whatever the Deku Tree is saying sounds like so much static in his ears.

* * *

He blinks back the memory, Zelda's voice still echoing in his ears from the far-off castle, to find himself on his knees in the grass, the breath rasping in his lungs and the Sheikah Slate hanging from nerveless fingers. The silhouettes of deactivated Guardians rise around him in the grass, rain pattering down around them and making them shine oddly in the moonlight. (He can't tell if the white noise in his ears is the rain or his own creation at this point.) He can almost taste the sharp sting of the Guardians' lasers in the air, the burn of his own wounds as he puts up one last defense, the flash of malevolent purple in the corner of his eye—

But it's only a memory, and as he jerks his head to the side the world tilts, and he lands with a splash in the mud, the Slate falling from his hands and the cold seeping immediately into his tunic.

He just breathes, for a moment. (He knows there are bokoblins nearby, but they're far enough away that he can afford it. He hopes.)

It takes longer than a moment, but finally the urge to curl into a ball and never get up again fades, and he wobbles to his knees once more. He reaches for the Sheikah Slate and feels an odd— _irrational_ —dread as he pulls up his map of Hyrule and stares at the marker for the Saas Ko'sah Shrine he found in the castle docks.

Maybe he could just walk. Just… go back to the Duelling Peaks Stable, take out a horse, and make his way on foot. It wouldn't take more than a day.

A day Hyrule might not have.

His hands clench around the Slate, and he closes his eyes as he activates it.

* * *

By the time he's facing Calamity Ganon, the monster's spidery legs splayed across the underground room as it lies sprawled from the Divine Beasts' attack, he almost feels normal. His palms are slick around the hilt of the Master Sword and the Hylian Shield feels like a choking vice around his arm, but the adrenaline is pumping so hard through his veins that he can hardly feel anything else. His heart is pounding, his breath hissing through his lungs and his head spinning, but his entire world is focused on the Calamity before him, because this is it.

All that time—spent, wasted, _saved_ —is for this moment.

He remembers enough to know that this, right now, is the moment of his destiny as Hyrule's Knight, as one of the five Champions, and he's not going to fail. Not now.

And so he doesn't.

* * *

The last light arrow leaves his bow, and he watches in a detached sort of awe—the adrenaline burning itself out of his body in what feels like seconds—as Zelda, his Princess, appears from the body of the Dark Beast and seals it away, as calmly as if it's a bit of target practice after dinner. He floats down on his paraglider and manages to only stumble slightly as he hits the ground, and by then the air is already clearing, the last echo of Ganon's roar fading into the distance and the red tint of the blood moon paling until it's nothing more than a memory on his eyelids.

And then there's just Zelda, looking just like she did the last time he saw her, a tiny little smile on her face as she asks, "Do you remember me?"

He feels the breath leave his lungs like he's been punched, and can only nod with a jerk. (The world spins again.)

Zelda slowly steps forward and gently takes both of his hands in hers. "You have done much for Hyrule, brave Knight," she says formally, though her eyes are downcast. "You have fought… many battles." Her voice gets a little rougher. "And you have suffered many wounds, all for a land you could barely remember." Finally, she raises her eyes to meet his. "I, and all of Hyrule, owe you a great debt." She raises his hands in hers, letting her fingers glide across his bloodied knuckles. "I hope that, now that the Calamity has been sealed… you may have some rest."

Link breathes deeply, something foreign and cloying in his throat. "Yes," he manages to choke out, voice rough from disuse. He would like that very much. (He's just… so tired.)

Zelda takes a deep breath and then releases his hands, and it's like the moment has passed into nothing the same way Calamity Ganon was sealed away. "I suppose we should find shelter. And… and let Impa know what's happened. Do you still have the Sheikah Slate?" Before he has a chance to answer, she waves a hand in the air, the first gesture that reminds him (with what little he remembers) of the princess she was a hundred years ago. "What am I thinking, of course you do. We should make our way immediately to Kakariko so we can treat your wounds and spread the news that the Calamity has been defeated." She smiles again, that same tiny smile that barely exists but speaks of the girl she was (is?), and holds out her hand for his. "Well, let's be off then. No time like the present."

He hesitates—only for a moment, but he does—and then, his Princess' eyes on him when he thought he'd never get to see them again, he pulls the Slate from his hip and pulls up the map, selecting Kakariko Village. (His fingers barely shake.)

Then he gently holds Zelda's wrist and activates the warp, letting the blue energy break them apart and pull them into the air.

He doesn't remember landing.

* * *

 **I'll probably continue this; I wrote it in like two hours after finishing the game because I had a lot of feelings.  
**

 **-Akita**


End file.
